Hans Müller: the spiritual father of organic farming

Dr. Hans Müller was born in the canton of Bern in 1892. There he grew up among six brothers and sisters on a farm in the Emmental valley. Until the early 1930s, Müller worked as a teacher. His experience of the hardships of farmers’ families and the social problems connected with it made him decide to go into politics.

In the course of his political work, which included 19 years in the National Assembly, Dr. Hans Müller became convinced that the basic issues of rural existence could not be solved on a political level, but that the farmers would have to help themselves.

He focussed mainly on small farms and how to secure their existence. Dr. Hans Müller saw one possibility of rural self-help in the rejection of conventional farming, lowering costs and maintaining soil biota, as well as in the production of high-quality food.

Together with his wife, Dr. Marie Müller, and the doctor, bacteriologist and soil scientist, Dr. Hans Peter Rusch, he developed the method of organic-biological cultivation.

In this team of three, Dr. Hans Müller took on the task of implementing the scientific innovations tested by his wife and the bacteriological research findings by Rusch into rural practice.

With their new method they brought new impulses to Swiss agriculture and beyond. Similar to the bio-dynamic method, which was also developed in Switzerland by Rudolf Steiner, organic-biological farming then spread to other countries.